ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



years a sum that corresponded to about 50,000 of our money for the 

 privilege of not attending his parish church. 1 



Although the sums that came to the Crown from recusant fines 

 during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. were so considerable that 

 they formed a fiftieth part of the whole revenue, nevertheless the amount 

 actually exacted was far larger. The evil system prevailed not only of 

 occasionally farming out these fines in a given area for a fixed sum, leav- 

 ing the farmer to make what profit he could, but of actually conferring 

 what was termed ' the value of the recusancy ' of particular Roman Catho- 

 lics on court favourites or court officials. This was done to a great extent 

 in Hampshire, particularly in the reign of James I. Two or three 

 examples will suffice. In 1609 Walter Toderick had the grant of the 

 value of the recusancy of Widow Chamberlain of Titchfield conferred on 

 him. 2 John Corbet in the same year obtained the valuable grant of the 

 recusancy of Richard Cotton of Warblington. 3 In the following year 

 Thomas Pinchey, Anthony Dodsworth and Jerome Metcalf, servants 

 of the prince, obtained the benefit of the recusancy of Henry Shelley 

 of Petersfield, Thomas Lane of Silksted, Elizabeth Hedger and Elizabeth 

 Norton of Barden, and Thomas Likehorne of Boyatt. 4 



We now turn back to the episcopal annals of Hampshire. Bishop 

 Montagu died at Greenwich on 20 July, 1618, and the very same day 

 the king nominated the saintly Launcelot Andrewes to the vacant 

 bishopric. His translation from Ely to Winchester was soon accom- 

 plished. Of Andrewes it may be said that he belonged, more than any 

 other bishop of the seventeenth century, to the whole Church of England 

 rather than to the special dioceses which he successively held of 

 Chichester, Ely and Winchester. 6 Year after year, though in one sense 

 no courtier, he preached sermons to the court on the verities of the 

 faith on all the great festivals of the Church. Nevertheless he dis- 

 charged his episcopal functions with dignity and assiduity, and Hampshire 

 must have felt the blessings of his rule, more particularly as he refused 

 at all hazards to institute to certain benefices priests whom he believed 

 or suspected of having obtained presentations through simony. For 

 this he had to suffer considerable loss in expensive law suits. 



At the time of the Reformation, when the old office books were 

 being revised, there was a singular omission with regard to a pontifi- 

 cal. The service now generally used at the consecration of churches 

 and churchyards is based upon that drawn up by Bishop Andrewes when 

 consecrating Jesus Chapel on Pear Tree Green near Southampton, on 

 Sunday, 17 September, 1620. Some bishops follow this form much 



1 The above facts were taken from Abbot Gasquet's The Old English Bible and other Essays (1897), 

 pp. 31982, but have been verified by reference to the Rolls. The receipts from recusant fines through- 

 out the country from 1583 to 1602 brought over 120,000 to the Crown. 



* Dom. State Papers, James I. xliii. 95. 



3 Ibid. xlix. 45. * Ibid. pp. 54-80. 



6 In 1 60 1 the lease of Alton Rectory, Hants, was assigned by the Crown to Sir Francis Walsing- 

 ham, and he assigned it to Launcelot Andrewes, towards his better maintenance at the University (Pat. 

 23 Eliz. p. z, m. 3). 



8? 



